Spark Core: Wi-Fi for Everything

While Spark Devices was relying on crowdfunding to fuel its strategy, the company managed to get comfortably past its USD 10'000 initial funding goal. (USD 567'968). The Spark Core is an Arduino-compatible, Wi-Fi enabled, cloud-powered development platform that "makes creating internet-connected hardware a breeze", says the team around CEO Zach Supalla.

And this little board packs a PUNCH: with a 72 MHz ARM Cortex M3, the best Wi-Fi module on the market, wireless programming, and lots of pin outs and peripherals, there's nothing you can't build with the Core.

The Core is a totally open source hardware product. All hardware design files (schematic, board design, and bill of materials) and firmware will be open source; the guys even went with open standards (HTTP, TCP, TLS/SSL, Protocol Buffers). The components used are available from any major distributor. The point behind all of this? "We want to make it as easy as possible to extend and improve upon the foundation we've built."